grazing: fear

With over ten years of watching cows and sheep thrive on grass alone, grass all year, young green grass and seasoned mature grass, everything out there growing in the pasture -- just grass -- we still have moments, at least I do, of looking at the cows and worrying.

Right now, for example. This last spell of over a foot of snow on the ground and below-zero temps at night got us out feeding hay at bedtime.

There are seventeen animals at the convent -- fourteen bovines, roughly divided between adults, two-year-olds, and yearlings, plus two rams and a pony -- and they've been on pasture, well, always. We move fence year round, doling out paddocks calculated in real time, based on forage, animals, weather, and -- when there's snow on the ground -- accessibility. The animals thrive on this.

But when the forecast tells us the nights are going to be really cold, we want to know our babies -- yearlings now, but grass-fed Jersey/Dexter cross animals, not hulking corn-fed Herefords -- have full stomachs. So, after the herd has been on their new paddock for several hours (we move fence around four in the afternoon), we go back out and break up a few square bales in the paddock. The cows come up willingly, but they are already pretty full, so there's not a lot of pushing and shoving. Everyone gets his or her share. They eat pretty much everything, and then bed down for the night. In the morning they stand in the sun, generating vitamin D and chewing their cuds.

Maybe the hay isn't necessary, but we sleep better knowing it was offered.

Come to The Healing Land's April conference for small-farm families and homesteaders and let's talk about it.